Cerebral combat is the thing that kept me going in ffxi. I've played nearly everything to hit the market up to GW2, and nothing has compared combat wise. Slower? Sure. Better? Personally I think so.
I look at it this way: I'll use EQ2 as a reference here since that was the other mmo i played the most. I would rather have 10 skills over the course of 75 levels than to have 300 skills over the course of 50 levels, half of which are just upgrades of prior abilities. The new abilities you get though never really change the dynamics of your class, if you're an assassin (as i was) you're still pretty much spamming backstab/detaunt skills.
In ffxi, when you got to a certain level and obtained certain skills (depending on the job), it was a DYNAMIC change to the way you conduct combat entirely. Best example I can think of? THF. Lets say you already have your subjub stuff done for this scenario.
So, you're probably going /WAR at first, using a shield and a sword/dagger. At this point you're pretty much just a little extra DPS and skillchain creator, but you're also an "Oh shit! The tank went down/lost hate" contingency, provoke and perfect dodge can potentially save your parties ass.
Then you get sneak attack. At which point you're pairing a weaponskill with it in order to maximize burst damage.
Then you have /NIN and you add in pulling with shadows/status bolts to your functionality.
Then comes Trick Attack, which in essence makes you bust DPS/crowd control (ish) in the sense that you're responsibility is now A) Pulling and Keeping hate on the tank.
In no other game do you get that same sense of progression. Because in any other game your progression is meaningless in any sense other than "Cool, i got the stronger version of my previous skill" or "Cool, now my DPS is increased".
All of this is due to the nature of ffxi combat. Slower, but everything is intentional, and everything has a role in evolving your class AND your role in combat. With that said, i love the new animations, their speed and fluiditiy that i've seen in the videos for 2.0 thus far...I just hope that same dynamic combat isn't foregone in favor of the EQ style skill spam. You could definitely increase the pacing of the combat from ffxi while maintaing the core of what made it great, again i just hope that it remains after 2.0.
As far as the whole moving during casting thing goes....my thing is, who cares? Unless you were to implement something like D and D's spells, where lets say you cast fireball...you can't just cast that into the middle of the fray, or you'll screw up your party just as much as your enemies, or lighting bolt...you cant cast that haphazrdly, you would have to look around and see which direction you cast it so that you dont harm your party memebers, and so that you dont bounce it off a nearby surface and ave it come rigt back at you, AND you have to make sure you're not going to pull another mob in the line of sight of the one you're fighting.. So, if that's the kind of dynamic spell casting changes we're talking about, then yes i agree, otherwise it's pointless.
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Cerebral combat is the thing that kept me going in ffxi. I've played nearly everything to hit the market up to GW2, and nothing has compared combat wise. Slower? Sure. Better? Personally I think so.
I look at it this way: I'll use EQ2 as a reference here since that was the other mmo i played the most. I would rather have 10 skills over the course of 75 levels than to have 300 skills over the course of 50 levels, half of which are just upgrades of prior abilities. The new abilities you get though never really change the dynamics of your class, if you're an assassin (as i was) you're still pretty much spamming backstab/detaunt skills.
In ffxi, when you got to a certain level and obtained certain skills (depending on the job), it was a DYNAMIC change to the way you conduct combat entirely. Best example I can think of? THF. Lets say you already have your subjub stuff done for this scenario.
So, you're probably going /WAR at first, using a shield and a sword/dagger. At this point you're pretty much just a little extra DPS and skillchain creator, but you're also an "Oh shit! The tank went down/lost hate" contingency, provoke and perfect dodge can potentially save your parties ass.
Then you get sneak attack. At which point you're pairing a weaponskill with it in order to maximize burst damage.
Then you have /NIN and you add in pulling with shadows/status bolts to your functionality.
Then comes Trick Attack, which in essence makes you bust DPS/crowd control (ish) in the sense that you're responsibility is now A) Pulling and
Keeping hate on the tank.
In no other game do you get that same sense of progression. Because in any other game your progression is meaningless in any sense other than "Cool, i got the stronger version of my previous skill" or "Cool, now my DPS is increased".
All of this is due to the nature of ffxi combat. Slower, but everything is intentional, and everything has a role in evolving your class AND your role in combat. With that said, i love the new animations, their speed and fluiditiy that i've seen in the videos for 2.0 thus far...I just hope that same dynamic combat isn't foregone in favor of the EQ style skill spam. You could definitely increase the pacing of the combat from ffxi while maintaing the core of what made it great, again i just hope that it remains after 2.0.
As far as the whole moving during casting thing goes....my thing is, who cares? Unless you were to implement something like D and D's spells, where lets say you cast fireball...you can't just cast that into the middle of the fray, or you'll screw up your party just as much as your enemies, or lighting bolt...you cant cast that haphazrdly, you would have to look around and see which direction you cast it so that you dont harm your party memebers, and so that you dont bounce it off a nearby surface and ave it come rigt back at you, AND you have to make sure you're not going to pull another mob in the line of sight of the one you're fighting.. So, if that's the kind of dynamic spell casting changes we're talking about, then yes i agree, otherwise it's pointless.